Rosa

Title: Rosa
Author: Nikki Giovanni
Illustrator: Bryan Collier
Publisher: Scholastic Inc, 2005
Grade: 3-5
Genre: Biographical Non-Fiction, Coretta Scott King Award Winner, Caldecott Honor Book

Summary:

This book is about a young African American woman by the name of Rosa Parks. Her husband was Raymond Parks, and he was known for being one of the best barbers in town. Rosa was a seamstress. One Thursday afternoon she had gotten ahead of schedule and decided to go home. She got on the bus and noticed that the entire black section was full so she sat in the neutral section. Then out of nowhere, the bus driver gets up and tells her to move in a very unkind manner. She stood up to let the other person out and then sat back down. The whites were yelling at her and telling her that she was going to be arrested and sure enough she was. She decided after thinking to herself that she was tired of having to use different facilities than the white people. She sat there and would not get out of her seat and was then arrested by the local police. Word got around town about her arrest and people became infuriated. Twenty-five women gathered together and made signs to hang up around town. The signs told people to boycott the bus system. After this a young boy who was fourteen years old was lynched. There were one hundred thousand people at his funeral. Martin Luther King Jr. became their voice, and he told people to stay off the buses. They walked together in a nonviolent movement. On November 13, 1956 the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was wrong, thanks to Rosa Parks.

I felt like this was a very good book and very informative. I learned things from this book that I didn’t even know before. I learned about Rosa Parks’ husband Raymond, and how he was a barber. I learned that she was a seamstress and I also ruled that there was a neutral section on the buses. I had always thought that there was a black section and a white section on the bus. Another thing that I really liked about this book was the authors note at the beginning. The author used really good description when describing her strength. I noticed in the book that Rosa sat in the middle of the bus. For some reason I had always thought that she sat at the front of the bus. I always thought that the events of that day were planned out beforehand; I didn’t know it was a spontaneous decision to protest. I thought the book made me feel good. At the end I was thinking “Yeah! You go Rosa!” Thanks to these people standing together and being strong they have made giant steps to end segregation, even though there is still some left today. One of the quotes in the book that really got to me was “I said give me those seats! The bus driver bellowed.” I thought that this was so rude, and I could never imagine yelling at a person like that. This is the part of the book that really upset me the most because it was just plain mean. I really thought that the illustrations added to the mood on this page as well. You can see her eyes and she is at the bottom of the page and then you see the bus driver just starring at her. It looks like the illustrator used cutouts and collage to create the illustrations in the book. I felt like I learned a lot of very valuable information from this book after reading it, and I am glad that I did!

I would use this book in my classroom when learning about Civil Rights. I think that this would be a good book to read to the class and then have a class discussion on what happened and to make children aware that this sort of thing should never happen again. You could have children write stories or create their own collage during black history month, this would be a good time to introduce this book!

http://www.rosaparks.org/